Furniture Shopping, Cilantro, Sakana-Tei …..

This weekend was dedicated for furniture shopping!!! Viet and I went to Tottenham to see all the ranges available…

After a long day strolling up and down Tottenham Court Road, our feet got tired… It was freezing cold (-1 degree) so we went to Cilantro for hot chocolate and capuchino…

Cilantro is a hidden coffee place in Tottenham Court Road with nice deco…

Address:
100 Tottenham Court Rd
London
020 3205 0058

The hot chocolate was GOOD!!! It’s EVERYTHING you would need for a cold day in London…

We then walked to a Japanese restaurant in Maddox Street for dinner

Sakana-Tei
Address: 
11 Maddox Street 
London 
W1S 2QF

After stumbling upon various great reviews of Sakana-Tei, we decided we had to give it a try, and so we did. The truth is, we did walk past the restaurant (whose entrance may be easily overlooked) before, but it was closed and we could not venture inside. The idea escaped us and did not come back until recently with the reviews we read. How I wish we had tried this much earlier.

Sakana-Tei is a small and super friendly Japanese restaurant, frequented by regular Japanese customers. It was quite a big risk we were taking walking in with no booking. Fortunately it was early on a Sunday evening, and we were quickly given a table amongst the (many) “Reserved” tags.

Their special menu, naturally, is 100% in Japanese, and if you were, like us, someone without much of a linguistic skill in Japanese, I think you could ask for help on translating what this blackboard comprises. However, we were in somewhat of a rush and could not do it yesterday, we will definitely tackle that blackboard in the next visit.

So, on-the-menu we went. Fatty tuna rolls, and salmon skin rolls to start with. Unassuming looks, with fresh ingredients, don’t think I would need to say much more for a description? We really could have cater for our usually insatiable apetites for sushi and sashimi by ordering much more, but somehow (rightly or wrongly) we were not feeling like sashimi with yesterday’s cold weather. Well, we are definitely visiting again, so why worry?

Fried tofu and scallop, not oily, and seasoned just right. The tofu is firm and packs flavour, and the scallop is also really good. However, the accompanying onion and chinese leaves do not really fall within my list of favourites, and seem to outnumber the main ingredients somewhat.

The star of the show, a box of unagi jyu (not a very “winter-ish” dish I know, but just couldn’t help the drive to try it). The look is, of course, simple as it should be. But the taste really is way beyond that. Flavourful with chewy texture, the eel and the source worked wonder on my palate.

I am saying this again, but Sakana-Tei is a really friendly place. The service is great, the food is great, and the price tag is nothing out of the ordinary for a Japanese restaurant in London. This is now amongst our must-go list for Japanese food!!!!

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